what does it mean "live as a woman"?

[vivariumvivariumsvivaria]

I gather that in order for a male person who believes themselves to be feminine they have to "live as their acquired gender" for 2 years in order to get a GRC.

Is there a definition of how women live? Because I don't think I qualify.

@CuriousaboutSamphire I do feel differently about the OFTW who are in my mind not like the current vocal minority. To sound like a teacher, I think this modern campaign to erase women has spoiled it for everyone

It was that friend who made me a relatively late GC convert. But another pissed conversation changed my mind - I got a deletion/strike for saying this too baldly before - she knows she is male, has a GRC, married her long term girl friend, and is usually very blunt about the idea that humans can change sex. Her take on all of this is that TW rely totally on the goodwill of women and the forebearance of men. Pissing either cohort off is self defeating in the extreme.

I can’t rtft because on a train with patchy wifi. But a transman did an ‘Ask me anything’ thread on Mumsnet a while ago. And the answer to this question was Yes,it is prety much just changing your name and wearing feminine clothes.

Trans women are one of the many types of women. Their experiences may differ from other women, but all women's experiences differ from those of other women.

Only if woman means a human being of either of the two sexes. Trans women are one of the many types of people of the male sex, therefore they have nothing in common , other than their humanity, with people who are members of the opposite sex.

I think a definition like this is necessary because when we try and reduce womanhood to any other particular snappy reductive definition, we keep losing people through the grating below.

Good lord. A woman is an adult human female. The only people lost through the grating are adult human males.

Difficult to believe that nonsense definition! And I've read the one about women being a swirling constellation of, er, something.

@midgedude - pretty much! Our bodies tell the story of the journeys we took to arrive where we are, and our minds are the product of those bodies and the experiences of living within them while being socialised to behave in certain ways by our treatment by society. My body went through part of a delayed male puberty and then paused for a while before going through a female one. My growing mind experienced attempts to socialise me as male in childhood, which I fiercely rebelled against, and then attempts to socialise me as female, which I didn't. Am I male? Genotypically, yes. Phenotypically? Partially yes, mostly no. Am I female? Genotypically no. Phenotypically, partly no and but mostly yes.

@WomaninBoots - No offence taken. You're expressing your personal beliefs truthfully. You choose not to believe people when they tell you they're women, choosing to rely instead on...what was it? Genotype?

Does this have anything to do with being a woman? Well, I certainly know how legal systems perceive me, how my family perceives me, how my niece and nephew perceive me, how my friends perceive me, how partners perceive me, how my colleagues perceive me, how rando's on the street perceive me, how people in female toilets perceive me, how appearance-based sex-filtering AI's perceive me, how people who enjoy my VA work perceive me, how any poster on this forum would perceive me if they met me on the street, and indeed how I perceive myself.

@BitMuch: Or is this supposed to be the answer to my question: I don't have an axiomatic answer that neatly resolves it into clean categories, I'm afraid - but it's pretty clear in today's world that dividing on genetic lines isn't the way

Yup. Pretty much this. We can divide people by genes (excludes DSD's); we can divide them by specific body parts ('cervix havers' and other awkward language); we can divide them by the presence (current or historical) of sex hormones, or we can divide them by...asking them. We can even make them undergo a trial of ordeals while repeatedly asking them over several years if just asking them and believing them isn't enough.

Woman is the combination of factors that led us to exist in and interact with the world around us -as- women (performance), filtered through our own experiences of physically existing in bodies affected by properties we would define as female (embodiment), and coloured by the subjective personal awareness of ourselves as women (identity).

A performance of one's made up internal definition coloured by a self serving description of what one would like a woman to be?

In order to redefine sex to be based on some words said out loud.

Got it.

I mean, as a paragraph, it absolutely nails the difference between men and women, in my opinion.

Trans women are one of the many types of women.
Can you name these "many types of women" because I can only think of one type of woman - the adult female type. Within that there are young and old women, black and white women, mothers and women without children, French women and Indian women (and indeed Geordie (Newcastle) women and Smoggy (Middlesbrough) women)and a 1000 other groups. But they aren't different "types" of women they are all just women. They may share a language or the knowledge of how change a nappy on a wriggly toddler with other women that could be placed in the same subset but that subset isn't a different type of woman. Each woman will fit into dozen of different subsets and will change sets over time (so they may be a young, French, child free, single woman in their 20s and an elderly, married, patent and grandparent with British citizenship living in Middlesbrough in their 80's). They are not fixed and they are not distinct separate "types". Just as I am not a type of man because I'm 5'9", wearing men's tracksuit bottoms and can explain the offside trap as deployed by Arsenal under George Graham.

I just find this way too confusing. It is like an essay written by a student who believes that they are very clever.

What happened to “women are the sex which is built around making large gametes. This build creates a biological difference which is very distinct from the sex which is build around creating small, mobile gametes”

And just attribute most other things to personality? Which legal (and other) protections for discrimination and disadvantages which stems from this difference in physique?

This just seems to be a mental exercise in how to disregard biology?

Or am I missing something?

Trans women are one of the many types of women. You see this is where you have persistently typed over, ignored, mansplained, corrected, belaboured and pummelled the concept of 'woman' into an amorphous catch all phrase. Ever malleable, pliant, meaning whatever you want it to.

Well, here's the deal my dear. It REALLY doesn't work like that because women don't accept that. Your perception of female, femininity is not the same as that of a woman. Your experiences 'as a woman' are most certainly not the same as those 'of a woman', no matter whow much you might wish they are.

Starting at a place of absolute honesty is all that is required to make any discussion between TW and women work. After the ideology is gone all that is left is the start of a hard conversation!

Their experiences may differ from other women, but all women's experiences differ from those of other women.

But not exclusively female experiences. More than 99% of all women experience at least one period. For the small fraction who do not reach menarche (first period) on their own by age 16, medical investigations are necessary to rule out life-threatening conditions, and during the course of these investigations, most of them will find out they were born with a difference in sex development or suffer from hormonal imbalances. Many of them will then receive medication to bring on menarche.

And more than 99% of us experience menopause, with all that entails. We don't go through it at the same age, we don't all have all of the symptoms, but we all go through it.

And there's motherhood. Yes, not all women become mothers, some by choice, some because of infertility, but 80% of us do. That's a large majority of women sharing pregnancy and birth as an experience.

Our individual experiences of being female, how we deal with them, how we cope and react, those are different (but given the human psyche reliably reacts to the same stimuli in a number of predictable ways, there's a limit to the amount of difference there is).

Of course, there's more than just biology, there's also the fact that being female in a male-dominated world has real-life consequences. At a meeting at Edinburgh University, Julie Bindel said - minutes before she was attacked by a male protester on leaving the building - arguably the most common female experience on this planet is the fear of male violence. Although only one in three women are estimated to experience domestic violence and only four in ten are estimated to experience male sexual violence, even those of us who have not experienced violence nonetheless know survivors of male violence and often have witnessed male violence (The Girl Guide decadal surveys consistently show that before they are 16, around six in ten girls have either experienced or witnessed male sexual violence). This has an impact on all of us. So the experience of male violence and its impact specifically on female people is something that all women have in common, too.

We have many more experiences in common, of course.

What though do all women have in common with all transgender male people that we do not also have in common with all other male people?

Or am I missing something? Yes. You are missing the lucky fact of your existence. The imperative to understand and acknowledge that entitlement above all else.

My body went through part of a delayed male puberty and then paused for a while before going through a female one.

Whatever happened to your body when you started taking opposite sex hormones, it wasn't 'female puberty'. Puberty is the process during which the body reaches sexual maturity. It is not possible for a male body to go through female puberty.

I certainly know how ... my family perceives me, how my niece and nephew perceive me, how my friends perceive me, how partners perceive me, how my colleagues perceive me, how rando's on the street perceive me, how people in female toilets perceive me, how appearance-based sex-filtering AI's perceive me, how people who enjoy my VA work perceive me, how any poster on this forum would perceive me if they met me on the street

This sounds like a fantastic skill to have. Up there with Layla Moran being able to see into people's souls. How do you know how people perceive you? I sometimes think I know what other people are thinking, but I can never quite be sure (and sometimes it later becomes clear that I'm completely wrong).

You're expressing your personal beliefs truthfully. You choose not to believe people when they tell you they're women, choosing to rely instead on...what was it? Genotype? Come on, could you be any more patronising?

My growing mind experienced attempts to socialise me as male in childhood, which I fiercely rebelled against, and then attempts to socialise me as female, which I didn't.

Now this is interesting to me. I fiercely rebelled, too. For as long as I remember. I didn't realise just how successfully I was socialised as female anyway until I started learning more about male and female socialisation a few years ago and started critically examining my behaviour.

It's all nice and well to believe yourself to have resisted - I too believe I resisted - but I've come to understand that there is a limit to how successfully young children can resist socialisation, when that is a conditioning mechanism neither we nor most parents are conscious of.

I do not believe any child can resist being socialised in the way society decrees it, because that conditioning process does most of the work before we know enough to resist it. We can seek to overcome it, we can defy it. We cannot escape it in my view.

The thing is butterfly that you using a none biological definition of woman excludes large numbers of people from being woman , yet these people still need representation, yet they can't as they have no recognised identity.

Am I a woman if I can't see how I am different from a man?
If a colleague doesn't realise I am female until we meet in the flesh and before then they see a man, am I then a man?

Relying on how I feel or what someone else. Thinks is daft

Doe- adult female deer
Mare- adult female horse
Sow- adult female guinea pig
Jenny- adult female donkey

Woman- adult female human

Womanhood- the state of being an adult female human.

As usual, attempts in this thread to redefine the sex terms for humans exclude human beings with limited intellectual capacity, who have no idea how they might be being perceived!

If I slip into a coma right this minute and stay in it for the next 30 years, I will still be a woman!

Butterfly. Managing to fool (or convince into capitulation with your fantasy) a whole load of people does not actually change reality. You are male. Genotypically and phenotypically male.

You can paint as many pretty pictures as you like but you are male. You only ever had the potential to produce one type of gamete, the male one. You are male and all your behaviour is male behaviour. By definition.

Intellectually disabled men are men.
Intellectually disabled women are women.

Intellectually disabled people exist, and they do not deserve to be kicked out of their sex classes for other people's convenience.

I just exist as me; it's the only way I know how to be.

Butterly, for goodness' sake. This is true, this sentence you've written here. We can only know, all of us, what it is to be our own selves. So how on earth do you leap from that to presuming that you know what it feels like to be a woman?

I certainly know how ... my family perceives me, how my niece and nephew perceive me, how my friends perceive me, how partners perceive me, how my colleagues perceive me, how rando's on the street perceive me, how people in female toilets perceive me, how appearance-based sex-filtering AI's perceive me, how people who enjoy my VA work perceive me, how any poster on this forum would perceive me if they met me on the street

Are you seriously trying to say that all these people perceive you as a woman? The very concept of which you are singularly unable to define, apart from paragraph after paragraph of your own internal thoughts?

I can't define a woman, but everyone thinks I am one.

I don't know what's worse, the entitlement, or the nonsense of it all.

My nieces and nephews perceive me as a superhero. DN told me once I was "even stronger than superman".
Glad to hear that means I actually am a superhero

The thing is butterfly that you using a none biological definition of woman excludes large numbers of people from being woman , yet these people still need representation, yet they can't as they have no recognised identity.

Yes! There's no way I would identify as a woman if it weren't for my body.

And yet I have a female body and have to put up with all the physical and social shit that goes with that. To be able to fight it we need to name it.

Pretty much this. We can divide people by genes (excludes DSD's); we can divide them by specific body parts ('cervix havers' and other awkward language); we can divide them by the presence (current or historical) of sex hormones, or we can divide them by...asking them.

Ask them what? What sex they are? That's what the first 3 things were trying to determine. Sex.

Unfortunately a lot of trans people do like to lie about their sex - do you not recall the census kerfuffle, where transwomen really wanted to put "female"?

So that's not going to work.

Or do you mean ask them for something else?

But we were trying to determine sex, because that's the thing that is an objective variable with meaning.

We're not trying to "divide" people just for a laugh. Dividing should only be done with good reason. Sex reaches that bar because of the clear sex differences. Gender identity does not.

There are no clear gender identity differences, except those arising from an assumption that gender identity = sex for the vast majority of the population. Whenever gender identity differs from sex, sex provides the better predictor. (eg numbers of trans people in prison - they're all male, as per sex. Trans people with "male gender identity" do not offend like people with a male sex).

So it makes no sense to divide people based on gender identity.

We don't need to classify people unless there is a reason behind the classification

Just asking people who they identify as is pretty irrelevant. The average mass murderer probably thinks of himself as an ordinary guy after all. It's actions not words that really define who you are

But in some cases a classification is needed. Understanding biology is one important case. And the societal harm to the sexual based female class is another

So being a woman isn't a choice. It's as much reality as the sea and the sky.